Can't Get Enough Bondage

Hegel's remarks concerning how one shapes the negation of their material being, which is done for the sake of edifying self-consciousness through work, makes sense. By negating any significance attached to their material being, one recognizes their impermanent essence in relation to existence at-large, whereby they learn to not only wholeheartedly accept death, but to maintain their negation by means of shaping, or manipulating (viz., working on) objects of their environs in order to become intimately integrated with the material world. This makes sense to the extent that a lack of work, or idle and leisurely activity, could easily lead to the dissolution of one's transcendent state of mind on par with superior self-consciousness, chiefly as an effect of too much surplus time to ponder excessively over the veracity of what they experienced, in turn becoming susceptible to doubt and pathological abstraction of their new paradigm, without having tangible objects of reality to shape and work on in order to realize beyond doubt that they were not dreaming or hallucinating what they experienced, and that their state of transcendence legitimately possesses the potential for maximal application in the material world.
On account of asserting himself as master over objects, rather than vice-versa, the bondsman trumps the fear of death that is primarily rooted in the notion of varying degrees of powerlessness with regards to other people, and all objects of the material world in general, specifically due to the seemingly overarching randomness and chaos that governs the majority, if not all, of the movements and interactions among people and objects of the world. In inverted fashion, the negation of externals by means of working on them reinforces the negation of the self's material being vis-a-vis the nature of existence in its infinite capacity. In consequence, based on personal analysis, such negation enables one to focus on optimizing their mind, or self-consciousness, in order to make existence as positive and fulfilling as possible, which could  arguably not be done by acquiescing to a false superiority of externals over the individual, as well as relying on the opinions and judgments of other people for the sake of validation. Instead, submitting to the Lord, namely the power of Death in Hegel's terms, allows one to fully appreciate their existence for the phenomenon that it is, and not allow other people and the general array of externals govern their gestalt perception and attitude towards life, as well as the content of the rich inner worlds they create by means of developing progressively higher states of advanced consciousness and, arguably, the evolution of imagination and internal peace that follows.
Such qualities naturally follow from what could very well be the most significant feature of such elevated self-consciousness, that being the quality of not just will power, but free will as well. With this capacity, one is able to make better choices regarding not just how to manipulate and navigate the external world, but how they choose to perceive and react to any given occurrence based primarily on their idiosyncratic perception.
Moving on, Hegel's claim that "Without the formative attitude, fear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become explicitly for itself," connected to the bondsman insofar as it initiates propulsion into a state of pure negativity, emphasizes that the Lord maintains a superficial self-centered attitude, wherefore his overseer-like mode of formative activity is not capable of engendering a maximization of consciousness associated with the apprehension of essential being that is necessary for growing into one who is being-for-oneself, rather than one who is merely being-in-oneself, as the Lord is doomed to experience.
Essentially, the Lord channels his fears by repressing them in the formative activity of bounding others in the mode of forced labor, thereby attaining a false sense of superiority on account of his initial layer of fear with regards to shedding his compulsion to dominate, when instead he ought to seek out intensive work, either physical or mental (or both) in order to learn to master his fears and express such mastery through work or creation of some sort. In contrast, the transformation of such fears into a delusive state of godlike dominance over others leads to a severely repressed existence that relies entirely on superficial graces, titles, and material indulgence in order to hide from the ugly truth about himself, or having to truly work at something that benefits the progress of humankind, and in turn his own self-consciousness.  
Furthermore, having a mind of one's own, according to Hegel, is purely regarded as an act of self-will, rather than a new kind of mind that is at one with the objective substance of reality beyond ego, whereby such an individual solely based on self-will has not been faced with terrible fear or horror at some point in their lives. For such an instance comprises the cornerstone of getting a taste of the ultimate, "objective" reality that must be experienced in order for one to attain a supreme state of actualized self-consciousness in the sense associated with that of the bondsman.

Lordship and Youth

Hegel's chapter on Lordship and Bondage, as indicated in class today, has informed many feminist and race theorist within the past century. While reading this section I couldn't help but think of Ralph Ellison's work in Invisible Man, a novel about life for African Americans in the twentieth century and James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. Both works reference the notion of white youth, that is to say, the idea that white Americans are unable to fully take up the mantle of democracy due to a perspective so rife with privilege that their grasp on reality is compromised. In paragraph 196 Hegel asserts, "the bondsman realizes that it is precisely in his work wherein he seemed to have only an alienated existence that he acquires a mind of his own." This idea applies directly to the unique issues of race in the United States and aligns with the positions taken by both Ellison and Baldwin when they write about the distinct importance of Black Americans on the formation of this country, an importance often overlooked.  Both authors suggest that the structure of democracy is so complicated that it requires a population capable of undertaking the thankless task of upholding its principles and values. This illuminating concept can be traced back to W.E.B DuBois' work and, as a society, we have Hegel to thank for orienting this discussion in the right direction.

Lordship and Bondage

In the Phenomenology, Hegel introduces the "lord/bondsman" struggle, a conflict between two independent minds that results in the subservience of one and establishing rule for the other. This social philosophy has been recycled by contemporary philosophers and socialist leaders to support their unique proletariate struggle, but it appears that Hegel was not offering a solution to "classism", as it were. Hegel is giving an example of how self-recognition is only possible through the reflection of oneself in another, therefore self-recognition is dependent on mutual recognition.

In our lord/bondsman example, we have two minds fighting for power over the other, and it is necessary that one mind must submit to the other. When this happens, both minds are experiencing freedom; the lord has the freedom to command the bondsman, and the bondsman has the freedom to engage in meaningful work. In this example, the lord has demonstrated a "deficiency". She was willing to die or kill for this power over her bondsman, which means she was unable to see her reflection in the bondsman. Her power is completely dependent on her bondsman, whereas the bondsman was able to recognize himself in his lord, achieving self-recognition.

Hegel Animals

This is a little bit of a step back but going back to around page 67. Hegel has a brief talk about animals  in relation to perception. "Even the animals are not shut out from this wisdom but,on the contrary show themselves to be most profoundly initiated into it; for they do not just stand idly in front of sensuous things as if these possessed intrinsic being, but despairing f their reality, and completely assured of their nothingness, they fall to without ceremony and eat them up. And all Nature, like the animals, celebrates these open mysteries which teach the truth about sensuous things"(65). I find this interesting that nearly every other philosopher we had read did not look at animals through this lens. He adopts a more studious approach to animals than them being the source of your decision for food or hunt. Humanizing this creature to create this bond of experience and perception.

11:11

The section of Force and the Understanding in which Hegel explains the inseparability of opposites in order to elucidate his distinction between Notion and law, makes sense. Namely, his explanation that sourness is oppositely contained within something that is sweet, just as either electromagnetic pole of Earth is inextricably connected to the other, and how what may be punished as a criminal act could serve a higher purpose either for the criminal in this world of appearance, or in the supersensible world—whether that be for himself or some aspect of that world—affords reason insofar as a unifying force may be assigned to such phenomena. For instance, that would consist of attractive electromagnetic substances, states of taste that will result from spoilage of a food that otherwise possesses an opposite taste in its ripe form, and how the process of civil law pertaining to punishment of crime comprises at least a roughly unified stream of a particular Force.

As an excellent exhibit of such opposition-centered Force based on inversion of its laws, such an utterance as “living on either side of the law” lends credence to how law functions in terms of Hegel's ontology, whereby the realm of criminal acts and the people who commit them are inextricably linked with those on the opposing side of so-called Law Enforcement, which is a system of individuals who cannot live as they do, or perhaps even have decent livelihoods, in the full-fledged absence of criminal activity. Conversely, criminals cannot receive a potential gain from punishment, or a process of trial whence they may be acquitted in a way translatable to personal growth, or some enhancement in a supersensible manner that might only be known by the self-consciousness of a punished, or eventually acquitted individual.

Ergo, the cumulative Notion of repellent polarities consisting of reward on one polar node (or the punishment-administering sector of the so-called justice system in a solicited sense) and the other node related to punishment received by a criminal on account of soliciting via their miscreant act(s), is paradoxically contingent on the cross-reliability of both sides of the system in order to generate a collective Force that literally requires opposite sides of the law. Also, such activity from a sociologically perspective is represented succinctly by the relationship concerning how the oxygen pole in the phenomena of electricity would equivocate, or be compressed into hydrogen in a state of “unmanifested electricity,” as Hegel puts it. This analogy as it relates to law in a psycho-social sense, and electromagnetism in a physical sense, aptly illustrates what is perhaps the most powerful phenomenon of reality in its totality: the diametric opposition of poles manifested conjointly as law, which is thereby manifested as the overall Notion comprising any and all activity occurring between the poles—that being Force.

Furthermore, the idea that law is attributed to the infinite replication of Forces contains legitimacy insofar as such laws happen to inexorably fall into place each and every time Forces manifest. Such Forces' instances can be repeated (or replicated, in Hegel's terms) to a theoretically infinite degree, so long as the necessary substrates are present in order for the complementary soliciting and solicited components of the law to actualize the overarching Notion of the Force associated with whatever substrates are taken into account. While this is cogent, Hegel seemingly fails to consider the potential impermanence of the multiplicity of substrates, which are indispensable in terms of facilitating the actualization of Forces that, in turn, would conceivably suffer utter dissolution without their essential substrates, whereupon revitalization of the Forces would fail to occur barring the reemergence of opposing substrates required to make such Forces exist. In light of this, it is arguably reasonable to conjecture that new Forces, or variations of preexisting Forces, could arise in accordance to the development of instances of altered, or altogether new substrates necessary for certain Forces to propagate.

In summation, supposing that dissolution of a theoretically infinite array of objects tantamount to utilization as substrates (and for a correspondingly infinite variety of forces) is viable, supreme existential intrigue is evoked upon the quandary regarding what underlying Force, unto which all other Forces are constituted, exists. An ultimate Force as such would not merely be infinite in a theoretical sense, but infinite in an absolute manner in accordance to the polarities necessitating law, which has always existed infinitely in a circular motion, or regressed to a point of singularity in which the poles split apart from an infinitesimally dense conglomeration and into a higher state of repulsion, thence leading to an array of activities capable of being performed within the primordial poles that in turn instantiated an infinite pool of objects susceptible to configuration into distinct Forces, with particular interest concerning the Forces relevant to the materially-dominated world of appearance that we seem capable of Understanding, or “knowing” so well by means of sense-perception.

Force as Movement

Understanding Hegel's explanation of force and the understanding requires one to consider the unity and movement between the excluding "One" and the "Also". Force is distinguished from "force proper", force being the movement from the One to the Also, and force proper the movement back from the Also to the One. We can see Hegel's universality in this division; force and force proper are identical as in they are both forces, but they are also completely opposite. For example, take the number series' 1,2,3,4,5 and 5,4,3,2,1. They are complete opposites of one another, yet they are also identical. The 4 is between the 5 and the 3, the 3 is between the 4 and the 2, and the 1 and 5 are on the extremes. This is one way that we can understand the unity of the excluding "One" and the "Also".

The Inverted World is the most mystical chapter in Hegel's phenomenology. and describes the a second "supersensible" world that contains the opposites of all objects, morals, propositions etc. The point of the paradoxical relationship between the sensory world and the supersensible is to illustrate that everything that appears has an inner appearance that does not manifest itself, i.e. salt is inwardly sweet, black, etc.

Hegel and Understanding

One aspect of Hegel that has particularly interested me has been his understanding of the manner in which human understanding is. His views take a more centered approach and contrast with other views such as Kant's view. In Kant, understanding is largely possible due to outside conditions, such as space and time. This is not the case with Hegel. Essentially, Hegel's understanding seems to be that we are the facilitators for understanding. He states that, "We are the universal medium in which such moments are kept apart and exist each on its own" (Hegel 72). Thus, our understanding interprets things in the manner in which we see ourselves. Humans are a collection of various body parts that interpret and act in varying ways. Thus, external things are understood by us within these separate terms and yet can be comprehended as a one due to our perceived unity as one body with many parts. The question arrived in class discussion as to why we strive for singularity, or unity of ourselves, against the outside world? Why when we walk is it so hard for us to understand the role the ground plays in our walking? The reason is within an element of how we see ourselves, as one. The most interesting component to this perceived unity is the fact that we are simply many various parts and yet we see ourselves as just the opposite. The one of the many. This view is then posited on the world around us and applied to our place, and our understanding, within it.